Norman's New Orleans and Environs: Containing a Brief Historical Sketch of the Territory and State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans, from the Earliest Period to the Present TimeNorman, Benjamin Moore
History
Norman's New Orleans and Environs: Containing a Brief Historical Sketch of the Territory and State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time
Norman, Benjamin Moore
New Orleans (La.) -- Guidebooks
"This discrepancy between the number of admittances, discharges, and
deaths," say the editors, "arises from the fact that a good many cases
of yellow fever occur, after the patients are admitted into the
hospital for other diseases--and some remain to be treated for other
diseases, long after having been cured of yellow fever; and, it may
be, that some cases are not noted upon the hospital books at all." The
proportion of deaths is accounted for by the exposed state of the
patient before admission. In private practice they do not average one
death to ten.
The absence of quarantine regulations in New Orleans, is often
remarked by strangers. Acts of legislation have been passed at
different times, establishing laws for the protection of the city,
which proved of but little service, owing, it is generally admitted,
to their not being carried out as it is now known they should have
been to test their efficacy, consequently they soon fell into disuse.
Much able, and it would seem unanswerable argument has been employed,
to prove that this scourge of tropical climates is not contagious;
yet, Dr. Carpenter, an eminent and learned member of the medical
profession of this city, with great research, has tracked it through
all its secret channels of communication, by which at different
periods it has been introduced.
The recent able essay of Dr. Hort, read before the Physico-Medical
Society of this city, and the proceedings and resolutions of that
body, had in reference to it, with equal conclusiveness show it to be
endemic, or of local origin, and not an imported or contagious
disease.
When such eminent "doctors disagree" what shall the unlearned and
uninitiated do?--we are surely in a dilemma, and hardly know on which
horn to hang our own humble judgment--but it would really appear that
with a sanitary system, commending itself to the more cautious views
of the Atlantic cities, an advantage would be gained, that would far
more than balance any diminished trade of our neighbors in the Gulf.
Are there not also, many hundreds of active, intelligent, business
making citizens, who now fly to the North on the first approach of the
sickly season, who, with such guards faithfully maintained about them,
would remain through the summer? and are there not thousands more in
various parts of the country, who, inspired with confidence by the
existence and maintenance of a system of measures which _they_ deem
essential to the preservation of the health and lives of the citizens,
would throng to our metropolis as the most inviting field of
enterprise, and thus multiply our numbers and enlarge our business far
more rapidly than it can, or will be done under the present system?
If in making these suggestions it should be supposed that we have
"defined our position," we shall shelter ourselves under "the
generally received opinion," "the prevailing fears of the
community"--and the prudential measures of other cities.
[Illustration: MAISON DE SANTE]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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